1. Introduction

The Austens encouraged and prized artistic expression of all sorts – including at-home theatricals, music making, creative writing, and drawing. In this talented artistic family, Cassandra and her watercolours were, as one historian once put it, ‘not less interesting in their eyes than Jane and her writing.’

Of Cassandra’s surviving artworks the most familiar are her family portraits, some of which have been reproduced in biographies. The unfinished sketch of her sister Jane has, via a Victorian-era engraving, even found its way onto the current ten-pound note.

Cassandra’s non-portraits are rarely reproduced, so it may surprise even the most avid Janeite that at least seven of her artworks on display here have proven to be meticulous copies of popular prints. Before the invention of the photograph, the art of copying was a valued artistic skill – and one approved in Austen’s fiction too, where it is assigned to Elinor in Sense and Sensibility.

At the London home of Mrs. Jennings, Colonel Brandon finds the eldest Dashwood sister closely examining a print that she intends to copy: ‘on Elinor’s moving to the window to take more expeditiously the dimensions of a print, which she was going to copy for her friend, he followed her to it with a look of particular meaning.’ This brief moment, which retreats quickly into the novel’s quiet realism, reflects the life-long artistic habits of the author’s own older sister, Cassandra.

When Cassandra copied a print or engraving, she did so with unflinching fidelity, creating faithful freehand replicas that she gifted to friends and family. Some of Cassandra’s clones proved so accurate that scholars in the twentieth century mistook them for tinted prints.  In her family, her prowess at copy-work was such a highly prized form of mastery that her gifts were framed and treasured for generations.

In Sense and Sensibility, when the Dashwood women settle into Barton Cottage, ‘Elinor’s drawings were affixed to the walls of their sitting room.’ Thanks to several loans and recent family donations, we are thrilled to be able to display ten examples of Cassandra’s art – the largest-ever public display of her work, since the walls of this very cottage were presumably decorated with her drawings when the Austen women resided here.